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Professor Shockley's Experiment

Glayde Whitney

Florida State University, Tallahassee

One of the experiments that Professor Shockley suggested to the National
Academy of Sciences at its Spring Meeting of 1968 ("Proposed research to
reduce racial aspects of the environment-heredity uncertainty") has been
conducted; the results are in, but you won't hear about it in the mainstream
media. If recent history is a guide we will first wish the results the death
of silence. Pretend they do not exist. If that fails, then yell and scream and
call names. Outrage at insensitivity; heap acrimony upon ad hominem (see
Pearson, 1991). The unfortunate truth that no one was particularly hoping for
is completely at odds with the revealed wisdom of the egalitarian left: when
black babies are adopted into middle class bright white families they grow up
to function intellectually and emotionally like blacks.

Professor William Bradford Shockley (1910-1989), you will recall, was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1956. That was for research conducted
at Bell Telephone Laboratories where he was director of solid- state physics
research. It was in 1948 that his three-man research team created the point
contact transistor; Shockley personally invented the junction transistor, the
analog and the junction field-effect transistor, thus ushering in the age of
solid state electronics. He and his co-workers shared the Nobel Prize.
Shockley left the Bell Laboratories in 1958 and in 1963 was appointed to a
named chair at Stanford University. From the mid-'60s until his death in 1989
he devoted much of his scientific efforts to questions of heredity,
intelligence, and the welfare of western civilization. He spoke out repeatedly
against the "entrenched dogmatism" which prevented open discussion and
unbiased research concerning some of the most important issues facing our
civilization. For his humanitarian efforts he was excoriated by the
left-leaning press and "politically correct" academic scientists alike
(Pearson, 1992). While it has become de rigueur to complain about an
uninformed and biased media, they merely reflect a deeper problem. The power
to destroy civilization lies with the scientists and intellectuals, our modern
secular priesthood, who have given up the canons of science - objective
observation of the real world combined with honest reporting - in order to
accomodate the dogmas of a secular religion. An irrational ideological
zealotry that emphasizes the dogmas of socialism at the expense of scientific
knowledge has already brought about the downfall of one of the two great
superpowers. Can we be far behind if we pervert truth to follow the precepts
of the same secular religion?

Roger Pearson has well summarized Shockley's thesis, which scared the
political Left. It was simple: intelligence is a quality which is of prime
importance to humankind in the struggle to survive - but it is not evenly
distributed between individuals and races. The available scientific evidence
indicated that the level of an individual's intelligence is predominantly
determined by heredity, and also that the less intelligent members of the
American population are reproducing more quickly than those genetically better
endowed in this vital area of human competency:

Shockley's attempts to bring these facts to the attention of the public,
and his campaign for a top-level, government-funded scientific enquiry into
the question of human quality, was anathema to liberals and to those on the
political Left. The liberals felt that his ideas challenged the doctrine of
equality to which they were wedded, and the political Left quickly recognized
that they challenged their traditional argument that poverty was due solely to
class (and race) exploitation rather than, as Shockley implied, the low
intelligence of the inhabitants of the inner city slums who were unable to
find employment they could handle in the increasingly technical world of
modern America. (Pearson, 1992, p. 18).

It was in the 1960s that the Great Society's War on Poverty got going, in
the 1960s that Arthur Jensen first got into trouble for pointing out that Head
Start programs had not been successful in raising the intelligence of black
youth, and in 1968 that Shockley suggested a "research proposal that might
reduce the environment-heredity uncertainty regarding racial differences".

Shockley's Proposal

Shockley told the Academy "I have heard that the drastic environmental
change of adoption from a Negro slum into a middle-class New York Jewish
family has actually occurred for some 70 orphans."(Shockley, 1968, p. 102). Of
Course. The adoption design is the closest that you can come with humans (for
ethical reasons) to conventional scientific procedures for separating genetic
from environmental causes of the traits of individuals. It's the human analog
of the cross-fostering experiment: Take a Pit Bull puppy and have it be raised
by a Cocker Spaniel mom (and dad) in a Cocker Spaniel-provided home and social
milieu. If the Pit Bull grows up to think like a Cocker Spaniel, or to act
like a Cocker Spaniel, then you know that the environment of rearing
influenced the traits in question. Now, if the radical environmental change of
cross-fostering does not change the Pit Bull into a Cocker Spaniel, then what
hope is there for the less drastic and less complete interventions of Head
Start and other "enrichment" type programs?

Since 1965 over $5.4 Trillion dollars have been spent in the Great Society
War on Poverty (Rector & Lauber, 1995), and we find ourselves bracing for the
arrival of the Super Predators (Dilulio, 1995). In the meantime, Shockley's
experiment has been conducted, more or less, and the results are in.

Adoption Study

For the experiment we are indebted to the eminent child psychologist Dr.
Sandra Scarr (recent President of the American Psychological Society and a
Past President of the Behavior Genetics Association, among other accolades),
and her colleagues (Scarr & Weinberg, 1976). The experiment began in the early
'70s when Scarr and her original collaborator Richard Weinberg were faculty at
the University of Minnesota. They have pointed out that "The intellectual and
social climate of Minnesota is generally conducive to liberal and humanitarian
movements such as interracial adoption" (p.727 ). In 1966 an influential
organization named the Open Door Society of Minnesota was formed by adoptive
parents of black children. The founding president of the Open Door Society was
a leading columnist for a Minneapolis daily newspaper who frequently wrote
about his multiracial family. In this auspicious social climate Scarr
recruited 101 families that lived within a 150-mile radius of the Twin Cities
(Minneapolis-St.Paul) metro area. Many of the participating families were
recruited through the Newsletter of the Open Door Society. The 101 families
included 321 children who were 4 years of age or older when originally tested
in the 1970s. There were 145 biological offspring and 176 adoptees, of whom
130 were black and 25 white. The remaining 21 consisted of children of Asian,
American Indian, and Latino ancestry. Further, many of the "black" adopted
children could be grouped as to whether they had 2 black biological parents
(black/black kids) or one black and one white biological parent (black/white
kids). When originally evaluated the average age of the children was seven,
and the results were happily reported in many media outlets and reviewed in
many standard psychology and child development or educational psychology
textbooks. A follow-up study was conducted 10 years later, at an average
children's age 17 (Weinberg, Scarr, & Waldman, 1992). Don't expect to see the
results of the follow-up study in the textbooks or the mainline liberal media.

National Dilemma

The national dilemma that provides the backdrop for Professor Shockley's
experiment is the large gap between black's and white's average intelligence.
It is important to note that among serious scholars the IQ gap has never been
an issue: It is the reason for the gap - cultural deprivation, genetic
differences, etc.- that has been the issue. The racial gap in average IQ is
large and important: About 15 points separate the black average of 85 from a
white average of about 100. These 15 points represent about one standard
deviation of the bell curve of the intelligence distribution. From this it
follows that only about 16% of blacks equal or exceed the average of whites,
thus by white standards fully 84% of blacks are of below average intelligence.
The racial discrepancy is larger the further one gets from the average -
blacks are very much over represented among the intellectually disabled and
very much under represented among the exceptionally gifted. These facts are
essentially what is behind the perceived need for affirmative action and other
black preferential social policies, although it is generally quite incorrect
to mention outside the confines of the ivory tower - as Charles Murray
discovered in the firestorm of criticism for having written (with the late
Richard Herrnstein) The Bell Curve. Faced with the racial gap, as well as a
wide range of individual differences within each race, the egalitarian
priesthood has waged one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in
the annals of modern propaganda. IQ went from being one of the brightest stars
in the firmament of applied psychology to being deemed useless, misleading,
evily oppressively racist, and even outlawed in many settings. (If the race is
important and Cocker Spaniels regularly run substantially faster than do Pit
Bulls, then viciously attack the stop watch). Antidotes to the ideological
zealotry include The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994), as well as Arthur
Jensen's Bias in Mental Testing (1980) and Stanley Burnham's America's Bimodal
Crisis (1993). Of course intelligence is important and of course IQ well
predicts performance in many settings.

Childhood Results: Environments Matter [Blacks will be Whites]

Against this anguishing national (and international) backdrop Scarr and
Weinberg (1976) reported that when evaluated at an average age of seven, the
99 black and interracial children adopted in the first year of life had
average IQ scores of 110. Wonderful. The egalitarian liberals literally jumped
for joy. Quickly into virtually all the introductory textbooks in the relevant
fields went the findings and the interpretation: Blacks raised in the
favorable home and cultural milieu provided by bright middle class white
parents not only did well, they actually did substantially better than the
national average for whites. Clearly the interpretation was that the abysmal
conditions and performance of blacks in general was correctable by the liberal
agenda of environmental treatments. Improve the home environments, schools,
and general social milieu of blacks and their intellectual performance will
substantially benefit. Scarr and Weinberg (1976) interpreted their results
thusly: "One reason for the substantial increase in test performance of the
black and interracial adoptees is that their rearing environments are
culturally relevant to the tests and to the school .... [the] black children
in this study have been fully exposed to the culture of the tests and the
school,"(p. 737). "There is no question that adoption constitutes a massive
intervention, as noted earlier, and that it has a favorable impact on IQ" (p.
738). "The major findings of the study support the view that the social
environment plays a dominant role in determining the average IQ level of black
children" (p. 739). Of such findings and interpretations are myths created and
liberal heroes made.

Although not emphasized, usually not even mentioned in the secondary
reports, there were disquieting patterns in the data of the seven year olds.
And in fairness to Sandra Scarr and Richard Weinberg it should be noted that
they presented the data in an apparently unbiased manner; they are of course
free to emphasize whatever interpretations they find appropriate for whatever
reasons. The final words of their 1976 report are "that both social and
genetic variables contribute to individual variation among them" (p.739).

Other critics found in the study results which were interpretable from a
genetic perspective. For instance, the adoptees with two black biological
parents (b/b kids) averaged IQ of 98.6; for b/w adoptees the value was 109.0,
while white adoptees (w/w) had average IQs of 111.5 and the biological
offspring of these unusual middle class parents averaged 116. Well. Here we
have approximately 13 IQ points difference, not so far different from the 15
points that separates blacks from whites in the general population:

[w/w 111.5] - [b/b 98.6] = 12.9

Give the b/b a dose of white genetic parentage (b/w) and the average IQ
goes up about 10 points. Raised in a white family environment so advantageous
that the children born to those white families average an IQ of 116, b/b
adoptees only manage an average of 98.6. Of such politically incorrect
observations are doubts made. Well, answered the authors, in effect, no single
experimental study is perfect in all respects and this one is no exception.
There were unfortunate confounding variables in the data that could perhaps
have been responsible for the discrepancies. For example, b/b kids tended to
have been placed for final adoption somewhat later than others, thus perhaps
early perinatal experiences were somehow detrimental to IQ, or, perhaps
"expectancy effects" were at play and parents adopting b/b kids didn't expect
as much of them as from b/w or w/w kids. The possibilities for equivocation
are seemingly endless. But, however, it seemed clear that the b/b value of
98.6 was higher than the black population average of 85, and 98.6, by golly,
is awfully close to the general population average value of 100. Bottom line
for the interpretations widely accepted from the study conducted at average
age seven: Environments matter and "good" environments like those provided by
bright white middle class parents increased the IQs of black children. In
other words, Pit Bull puppies raised by Cocker Spaniels acted like Cocker
Spaniel puppies. But what of their behavior as adults?

Limits of the Family Influence

While questions of racial inequalities and what to do about them, or
indeed, what can be done about them, have been festering in the national
agenda, quite remarkable progress has been made in the general sciences that
deal with human development and behavior genetics. From new data have come new
and quite surprising interpretations. The new data are mostly from studies of
adoptees evaluated when they are adults, rather than as in most older studies
where adopted children were studied in childhood. Also there are many new data
concerning adult twins, raised together or raised apart, and other kinds of
family arrangements. It now seems that for many physical and psychological
traits, including measures of personality, intelligence, and psychopathology,
identical twins that have been raised apart in different families resemble one
another very closely in adulthood. At the same time, adoptees, although
sharing a common family environment across many years, do not resemble each
other in adulthood. Quite amazing and quite surprising, even to the scientists
who have conducted the studies. Geneticist David Rowe in his recent book The
Limits of Family Influence (Rowe, 1994) points out that

Most people believe that different rearing experiences have something to
do with differences in the way children turn out. ....... A social scientist
opposing this cultural belief would be dismissed as uninformed and possibly
dangerous. In response, many people would recount stories from their own
lives. Social scientists would mention the massive research literature showing
influences of rearing on behavioral development. Nonetheless, many societies
once accepted a flat earth; both experts and cultural beliefs, on some
occasions, may be wrong. ( p. 1).

This is pretty heady stuff, and Dr. Sandra Scarr has herself been an
influential theorist in these new directions.

The traditional view in the social sciences, with roots in centuries-old
philosophical speculations, has been that family environments, the social
fabric in which individuals grow up, have important and lifetime cumulative
influences on how the individuals turn out. Different societies or social
class experiences caused differences among the individuals that grew up in
them. The problem has always been that by-and-large genetically different
people raise their children in their own differing ways, so that when the
children grow up to resemble their family and to be different from others, it
was impossible to separate the genes from the environments as causes of
individual differences. To put it somewhat crassly, it has been known for
centuries that, in general, poverty and stupidity tend to go together. The
liberal catechism has taken it as central that poverty causes stupidity.
However, that may be mostly, if not entirely, wrong. To an important extent
stupidity causes poverty, and the "root cause" may be largely genetic. Such
heretical thoughts are usually branded as evil, even "racist", by the
enforcers of liberal ideological orthodoxy. But science accumulates knowledge,
sometimes even in hostile intellectual environments. It takes a
cross-fostering experiment - an adoption study, to separate genes and family
experiences as causes of individuality. Now that a number of such studies have
been done, the newly emerging interpretations run something like the
following:

In childhood, adopted children tend to correlate somewhat with the parents
who are raising them. This is because children are very importantly under the
care, guidance, and coercion of their parents. At average age seven or ten,
whether a child plays the piano or shoots hoops on a street corner, depends
largely on the interests and involvement of the parents. Does the child know
and enjoy camping, fishing and the great outdoors, or music, concerts and the
symphony, or beer, booze and dope? It depends very much on what the parents
are into and to what the parents expose the child. So, in childhood, adopted
children tend to somewhat resemble each other and to resemble the people who
are raising them. However, around adolescence/puberty some major changes take
place. Biologically some genes active in children turn off and other genes
active in adults turn on. One of the consequences is physical and mental
maturation: Sex organs grow and sex fantasies grow apace. Another consequence
is the "dispersal stage" common to most mammals and manifested among humans as
adolescent "rebellion", mild or severe. Most young people begin to more-
and-more control their own interests and choose their own activities and their
own friends. At 10, who you play with is largely determined by what the
parents allow; at 16 most youths much more choose and select their own friends
from among a wider field of possibilities, often to the consternation of their
parents. Play the piano? At 10 it is parent's choice, by 18 you quit if you
wish. The upshot of all this becoming-adult is that individually different
people seek out their own individually compatible lifespaces. The surprising
outcome is that as adults, individuals that were raised together but are not
genetically related (adopted siblings) correlate zero on many measures of
intellectual and personality functioning. Similarly, the adopted children,
when adult, do not resemble (the correlations are zero order) the parents that
raised them. There is little or no evidence for cumulative effects of family
environment. Rather, family resemblances, and differences, are importantly
influenced by genes. Heresy.

Adult Results: Blacks will be Blacks

In this minefield of theoretical readjustments Professor Shockley's
experiment sits, waiting to detonate. A ten-year follow-up was done, the
children evaluated at an average age of seventeen (Weinberg, Scarr & Waldman,
1992). The results and their interpretation have created a bit of a tempest,
so far largely confined to the academic teapot as reported in the scholarly
journal "Intelligence". Initially the authors maintained an interpretation of
the evidence as supporting environmental influences on the malleability of
black's IQ: "These results (demonstrate) the strong effects of the rearing
environment on IQ." (p. 131), "the results of the longitudinal follow-up
continue to support the view that the social environment maintains a dominant
role in determining the average IQ level of black and interracial children"
(p. 133). To some it looked like spinning through Alice's mirror, or
theoretically jumping through the Politically Correct environmentalist hoop
twice. But, after all, genetic interpretations of human race differences in IQ
will not get you elected president of the American Psychological Society; they
will get you defamed and shunned, at least. After challenge, especially by
Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster and Michael Levin of City College of
New York (Levin, 1994; Lynn, 1994), the authors wrote that "it is not possible
to reach definitive conclusions .... Our findings do not speak directly to
genetic and environmental etiologies of racial differences in IQ," (Waldman,
Weinberg & Scarr, 1994, pp 41, 42). On the contrary, the results not only
speak, they literally shout, but very Incorrect Politically.

When retested as young adults (average age 17) the b/b adoptees displayed
an average IQ of 89.4 while the w/w adoptees averaged 105.6 and the white
biological children of the adopting middle class white parents scored 109.4.
Recall that generally the racial IQ gap nationally is about 15 points, whereas
here the gap is:

[w/w 105.6] - [b/b 89.4] = 16.2

This is substantially similar to the previous result when the children were
young. What is different in this testing of older adoptees is the b/b average
of 89.4. Where is there any evidence for a role of the social environment?
Remember the earlier quotation: "There is no question that adoption
constitutes a massive intervention .... the black children in this study have
been fully exposed to the culture of the tests and the school," (Scarr &
Weinberg, 1976, pp 738,737). A lifetime of immersion in middle class white
family life sufficient to produce average IQs of 109.4 (biological offspring)
and 105.6 (white adoptees), for an average black outcome of 89.4. This may
appear to be above the nominal national average for blacks of 85, yet Levin
(1994) points out that Minnesota blacks score somewhat above the national
average. Parenthetically, the white biological parent dosage effect was
maintained in that b/w adoptees averaged an IQ of 98.5:

[b/w 98.5] - [b/b 89.4] = 9.1

As noted above, no single experimental study is perfect, and Scarr and
colleagues now emphasize that there were some differences across adoptee
groups in pre-final placement experiences. Perhaps Professor Shockley's
experiment is important enough that an attempt should be made to replicate it
on a large scale and without equivocal confounds. In the meantime, in the main
these results are very clear, and very consistent with a wealth of other data
and theory. Unfortunately these real data are completely at odds with the
revealed wisdom of the egalitarian left. Here in the real world, as a young
adult the Pit Bull, after being raised by Cocker Spaniels, acts like a Pit
Bull.

An early abstract of the follow-up experiment conducted when the adoptees
averaged 17 years of age mentioned social deviance and psychopathology at
higher levels than had been found in other adoption studies (Scarr, Weinberg &
Gargiulo, 1987). Languishing in two unpublished doctoral dissertations
completed by graduate students are some potentially interesting findings. One
dissertation, by Kimberly DeBerry (1991), was completed at the University of
Virginia where Sandra Scarr is now a Professor. Among other things, the
DeBerry dissertation reports the results of the Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory (MMPI) testing at average age 17. Fully 2/3 of the
interracial adoptees that took the test are said to display evidence of
maladjustment by having at least one clinical scale elevation on the MMPI.
Moreover, the white biological offspring of the middle class white adoptive
parents fared just as poorly. These data require some speculative
interpretation: Do they mean that Pit Bulls raised by Cocker Spaniels grow up
to be at increased risk of psychological maladjustment? Could it be that
Cocker Spaniel pups are harmed by being raised in mixed litters with Pit
Bulls?

To interpret the MMPI results from the adoptees requires a consideration of
the characteristics of the test. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory was one of the most reliable and most widely used assessment devices
for identifying abnormalities of personality. However, like any psychological
test it was not perfect and has been revised to become MMPI-2. The first
version of the MMPI was used in the DeBerry version of Professor Shockley's
experiment. The normative group for the original MMPI was 724 people at the
University of Minnesota hospital tested in the late 1930s and early '40s. It
was reportedly a good match for the 1940 Minnesota census. Dr. Ned Megargee, a
noted MMPI expert, once checked those census data and estimated that there
might have been 1.5 black people included in the 724 (Megargee, 1996). It is
well established that generally blacks tend to have elevated scores relative
to the standardization norms. Also, younger people tend to have elevated
scores on some of the scales. Of the 10 basic MMPI scoring scales, the four
with the most reported elevations in DeBerry's dissertation were, in order of
frequency, 9, 5, 8, and 4. The standard characterizations of high scorers on
these scales are:

9 (Ma) Mania - High scorers are called sociable, outgoing, impulsive,
overly energetic, optimistic, and in some cases amoral, flighty, confused,
disoriented; 5 (MF) Masculinity-Femininity - High-scoring males are described
as sensitive, aesthetic, passive, or feminine. High-scoring females are
described as aggressive, rebellious, and unrealistic; 8 (Sc) Schizophrenia -
High scorers are often withdrawn, shy, unusual, or strange and have peculiar
thoughts or ideas. They may have poor reality contact and in severe cases
bizarre sensory experiences - delusions and hallucinations; 4 (Pd)
Psychopathic Deviate - High scorers often are rebellious, impulsive,
hedonistic, and antisocial. They often have difficulty in marital or family
relationships and trouble with the law or authority in general. (adapted from
Rosenham & Seligman, 1984, p.163).

Without a matched age and race comparison group it is difficult to know
what to make of the finding that 2/3 of the tested transracial adoptees had
clinical elevations relative to the norms. It could simply be that these young
people, although raised in the home and social milieu provided by middle class
white parents, are performing like typical blacks raised under usual
conditions. In other words, as was the case with the IQ data, the personality
results indicate that Pit Bulls raised by Cocker Spaniels grow up to be Pit
Bulls.

Does it Hurt Whites?

The elevated scores of the white biological children of this sampling of
middle class white parents are problematic. Of the many possible
interpretations, three likely possibilities come to mind. One is that it is
hard on the white biological children to be raised alongside black adopted
siblings. It would not be the first time that well-intentioned liberal
humanitarian endeavors turned out to have unanticipated consequences (a
fascinating book-length account of the effects of The Great Society is titled
Paved with Good Intentions (Taylor, 1992)). We really don't know the
consequences for the white siblings. We do know that there are many physical
traits and maturational rates that are different between black and white
children, beyond the psychological variables that were the chief focus of the
study. Would it affect the personality of a bright white child to be raised
with a different race sibling that tended to be stronger, had denser bones and
better physical coordination, matured sooner and was more boisterous and less
intelligent (Rushton, 1995)? A recent report from the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (concerned with nutritional needs in childhood) reports that black
children experience their growth spurt two to five years earlier than white
children. By age 7 for boys and 6 for girls, blacks have accelerated muscle
and bone development. They sooner grow taller and heavier and mature sexually
about three years earlier than whites (Nando.net, 1996). A very extreme
across-species adoption study was conducted back in the 1930s by the animal
psychologists Winthrop and Louella Kellogg. They reported their findings in a
1933 book The Ape and the Child: A Study of Environmental Influence Upon Early
Behavior. When their first child Donald was born they located a baby
Chimpanzee named Gua. Donald and Gua were raised together as siblings and
treated as alike as possible, until being separated when Gua was 16.5 months
of age and Donald was 19 months. We have no way of knowing if there were any
long range effects of this experience for Gua or Donald. Anecdotally, a
scientist who knew him has reported that Donald had a gait with a definite
simian lope. Tragically, Donald committed suicide as a young man.

A second possibility to account for the elevated clinical scales on the
MMPIs of the biological children of the middle class white parents that took
part in transracial adoptions would be to invoke normal familial
relationships. Unfortunately we do not have the data for the biological
parents and thus cannot make the necessary comparisons. However, a likely
possibility is that these youth are simply displaying the well-known
phenomenon of familial correlations. Without casting any aspersions on the
adopting adults, one must ask what kinds of middle class white couples in the
social environment of 1960's Minnesota initiated cross-racial adoptions?
Undoubtedly caring adults who felt a social commitment and followed through
with quite unusual behavior. Such adopting was a very rare event and was "not
normal" in just this sense of being rare. People who engage in very unusual
behaviors, whether socially desirable or socially undesirable, tend to be
unusual in a wide variety of ways, including personality traits. Thus it is
entirely reasonable to hypothesize that the MMPI results of their biological
children might simply reflect the well known familiality of personality
characteristics. This parental- resemblance hypothesis is less likely to
account for the elevated deviancy rates of the black adoptees because in other
studies personality characteristics of young adult adoptees have been found to
not correlate with those of their adoptive parents or adoptive siblings (Rowe,
1994).

The third possible interpretation of the elevated rates of psychopathology
reported for both black adoptees and the white biological children in
DeBerry's dissertation is simply that the findings may be spurious. That is,
they may not replicate nor generalize. These results could be due to any
number of quirky events that might be unique to this particular study. For
instance, at the 17-year old follow up, not all of the adoptees or biological
offspring from the original study took the MMPI. Was there selective
participation that led to the particular pattern of findings reported? Because
the results and interpretations are of potentially great importance, Professor
Shockley's experiment probably should be replicated.

In a dissertation completed at the University of Minnesota, L. Fischer
(1991) related patterns of family functioning to MMPI characteristics of both
the transracially adopted and the biological offspring. She noted generally
that the white "Biological children showed significantly more psychopathology
than transracial adoptees" (p. 73). So again an indication that Cocker
Spaniels do not thrive when raised as littermates with Pit Bulls. Two of the
dimensions of family environment are labeled "Adaptability" and "Cohesion".
Cohesion has to do with the emotional bonding among the family members. The
members of high cohesion families are said to be "enmeshed", while low
cohesion families are "disengaged". When measured by deviancy of MMPI scores,
the white offspring seemed to be better in highly cohesive families and worse
with low cohesion. For the transracial adoptees, family cohesion was not as
important as was adaptability. The adaptability dimension has to do with the
tendency of a family to change its rules and relationships (power structure,
roles, etc.) in various situations. Adaptability involves the discipline,
roles, rules, and control systems of the family. Very high adaptability is
called "chaotic" which grades through "flexible" to "structured" to "rigid"
for low adaptability families. The transracially adopted young adults clearly
did better, as measured by MMPI deviancy, with low adaptability. With rather
rigid, structured roles and rules they appeared better overall and for them
cohesion was unimportant. Without getting into the conundrums of
directionality of causation (psychologically healthy adoptees create rigid
family rules, or families with rigid rules tend to develop psychologically
healthy adoptees, or both are parallel manifestations of genetic
predisposition), it is potentially important to note that the relationship
between kind of family structure and the apparent well-being of the children
was different for the white biological offspring and the transracial adoptees.
Consistent with the historical observations of such disparate commentators as
Albert Schweitzer and traditional Southern County Sheriffs, one interpretation
is that Pit Bulls do best with rather strict and inflexible rules. On the
other hand Cocker Spaniels respond favorably to emotional bonding.

What is to be Done?

One of the experiments that Professor Shockley suggested to the National
Academy of Sciences at its Spring Meeting of 1968 has been conducted and the
results are in. What is to be done? As suggested at the beginning of this
article, if recent history is a guide we will first wish the results the death
of silence. Pretend they do not exist. If that fails, then yell and scream and
call names. Outrage at insensitivity; heap acrimony upon ad hominem.

The unfortunate truth that no-one was particularly hoping for is completely
at odds with the revealed wisdom of the egalitarian left: When black babies
are adopted into middle class bright white families they grow up to function
intellectually like blacks. Less clear is what happens emotionally and in
terms of personality adjustment. Whatever, there is no evidence that either
the white children or their black adopted siblings grow up better adjusted,
and there might be substantially more social deviancy and psychopathology than
without the mixed-race adoptive experience. These data are consistent with a
large and growing body of other findings.

In a rational civilized and civily humanitarian culture there might be a
call for further investigation and study of the implications of the best
scientific information that is available. In a civilization that is
experiencing a phase of irrational ideological zealotry the response would be
quite different.

In 1961 a president of the American Psychological Association, Henry
Garrett, called the egalitarian dogma that blacks and whites are genetically
equal in cognitive ability the "scientific hoax of the century" (Garrett,
1961). In 1967 the Nobel laureate William Shockley lamented the "entrenched
dogmatism of inverted liberals" that prevented open discussion and unbiased
research (Shockley, 1967). In 1995 the sociologist Robert Gordon referred to
the "degradation ceremony" which is held to heap acrimony on anyone who
deviates from "one-party science" (Gordon, 1995). The Canadian psychologist J.
Philippe Rushton has experienced attempts to criminalize him because of his
research (Whitney, 1996). Charles Murray in his "afterword" for the 1996
soft-cover edition of The Bell Curve opines "The social science that deals in
public policy has in the latter part of the twentieth century become
self-censored and riddled with taboos - in a word, corrupt." (Murray, 1996, p.
575) The inquisitional zeal with which the secular priesthood attacks any
apostate from the egalitarian fiction would be ludicrous if the consequences
were not so serious.

Science and Socialism

The current state of affairs in the social sciences is not unprecedented in
recent scientific history. The conditions of soviet science under socialism
are only just now becoming known in the west. There have been a spate of
books, one is the 1994 Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science by Valery N.
Soyfer (translated by Leo and Rebecca Gruliow). Under socialism, the genetics
that forms the basis for individual and race differences was first attacked,
then ridiculed and essentially outlawed as an anti-egalitarian invention of
Western capitalists that was inherently evil because it was inconsistent with
Marxist-Leninism. In America The Science and Politics of IQ, or Not in Our
Genes, or Ever Since Darwin will give you the flavor (Gould, 1977; Kamin,
1974; Lewontin, Rose & Kamin, 1984). The absurd anti-factual structure which
developed was able to dominate all of the biological and social sciences in
the Soviet Union and its client states for a period of decades. This
perversion was not the work of any one man, not the great Lysenko, rather it
required the active involvement and support of many of the leading scientists
and intellectuals. It is a fundamental structural flaw of socialism, to claim
to establish reality on the basis of the scripture according to Marx. Genes
and heredity did not influence differences between individuals, or races, or
eventually even species. Instead, conditions of rearing were all-important.
Everyone knows fertilizer is important, so manipulate the early experiences of
the puppies in order to change their development. "Vernalization" was the name
for one sort of head start program, sure to transform winter wheat into spring
wheat. No need, or time for basic research, there was a pressing national need
that called for intervention now. So, throw money at nice-sounding
intervention programs. Then, without evaluation introduce nation-wide applied
programs. Discourage any mention of genetics - it represents the Hell of
Capitalism, the Devil's work in total contrast to the Paradise of Egalitarian
Socialism. Inheritance and genetics is Nazi-tainted evil; its practitioners
must be despicable racists. When one program after another fails, simply give
them more rubles, or quietly close them down while touting with much fanfare
yet another enrichment. It is truly scary; the parallels between Soviet
practice under socialism and environmentalist - egalitarianism in American
social policy. Egalitarian agriculture and the food shortages it caused played
no small role in the demise of the Soviet Union.

Soyfer says it well:

In any society, there are charlatans and people who are simply mistaken.
They may try to deceive their fellows, either by design or out of ignorance.
But in a healthy society, others will call attention to their errors, test
their assumptions, and make objective appraisals. Shams are exposed, and no
one punishes those who do the exposing; members of the government or secret
police do not hurl political accusations against seekers of scientific
truth. But that is what happened when an alliance of the Lysenkos, the
Stalins, and the Berias was part of the onrushing, bloody chariot of
socialism.(p.300)

One of Professor Shockley's suggested experiments has been done and the
results are in. Now after 30 odd years and over $5.4 Trillion dollars, perhaps
it is not too late to dust off some of his other suggestions.